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Friday, March 29, 2013

Disclosure Alert: Alpha Protocol: Episode 17: That Deng Boss

So now we finally reach the finale of Taipei. And I find an entire different reason to bitch about Taipei.

First off, the cape drop is supposed to be badass, but all it communicates to me is that Omen Deng is trying too hard.

I'll say it right now, the bosses in this game really, truly suck. They are almost universally unfun and unfair. As we'll also see in Moscow and Rome, this game turns from an interesting spy thriller into "just another video game boss fight" whenever we get the a hub's finale. I just don't understand the choice to have such rigid boss fights and to not allow you at least the option of talking your way out of them. (Especially for an Obsidian game like this, where conversation is really the most interesting part.) In all 3 of these points, all the problems with the gameplay just come together all at once and it's really frustrating.

Omen Deng has a bullshit version of Shadow Operative that Thorton won't even be able to get at Rank 15. The game does not allow you to use Shadow Operative if the enemy knows where you are and can see you. Here, we see Omen Deng vanish into thin air, which we shouldn't be able to see. You'll also see that his Cooldown is somewhere close to 0 where ours is around 90 seconds. I'm all for the bosses having player skills, but they should not have skills even a master in that discipline couldn't have.

I really hate combat taunts. I especially hate when they sound so mechanical. The only reasons I recall this otherwise uninteresting boss fight are that I died a lot on my first playthrough (to the other bosses as well) and that he kept telling me that "You're in, over your head." It's almost as bad as the Naked Muscle Man boss fight in Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Not quite that bad, but getting there.

I am honestly legitimately surprised that Aldowyn only took two tries to take him down. This is not because Aldowyn is unskilled. This is because there is almost always some wayward grenade incendiary device that will kill you almost instantly. Also, if Omen Deng decides to bum rush you with his martial arts, you have no way to defend yourself against it and no way to counter-attack. And you saw how much more health and defense this guy has compared to us. He took hundreds of shotgun slugs. Even on Easy, we can't take anywhere near that much punishment.

This conversation with Heck at the end of Taipei is one of my favorites. If he hates you, then he'll just take the deal and blame Mike for the assassination. If he likes you, he'll kill the VCI agent sent to blackmail him and set Wen Shu up for the fall, which he will later be executed for. I feel bad for Wen because as far as I can tell, he's done absolutely nothing wrong aside from get involved with Steven Heck for reasons unknown.

Overall, I like the concepts behind Taipei. I also like the overall structure of the Hub's mission. I take issue with the way they framed the whole plot. The moral choice is interesting, but set up in such a way as to frustrate players. The red-herring isn't an inherently bad idea, but there's no real reason to suspect him to be the would-be assassin. I promise you that the other two hubs are significantly better than this one. Taipei had great potential, but squandered it.

Lastly, it would be sinful for me to not link Shamus Young's comic detailing how comically stupid this particular boss battle is. Also of note is that while fighting him in the area with the statue, Deng makes the remark: "Here, before the eyes of our Nation's founder, you will die." Make of that what you will. Anaphysik and I have been discussing it, and we've got no clue exactly which person was meant to be referred to here.

12 comments:

anaphysik
said...

"we've got no clue exactly which person was meant to be referred to here" The primary problem being that the fellow has a beard, and none of the primary suspects (Sun Yat-sen, Chiang Kai-shek, etc.) ever sported a beard :/

There are several reasons why it's not unreasonable for Omen to have a special version of Shadow Operative, which I elucidated a long while back in Skype. Foremost of which is: without being able to turn invisible while you can still see him, /you wouldn't even know that he has Shadow Operative/ <_<. Without that visual clarity, you'd just presume that the game had removed from the map for no reason, rather than because he has the power to sneak away unseen. Additionally, Deng's mega-Shadow-Op is necessary to counter the player's mega-visual-range - no guard can ever see as far, as widely, or as adaptably as the player (and let's not even *touch* upon the fact that not ever player will notice the same details on screen - one of Deng's Shadow Op uses that looks obvious to one person will go unnoticed by another). (There are lots of technical reasons too.)

Player-enemy equality is generally a good thing (though let's be honest, is rarely employed in vgames anyway, especially when compared with tabletops), but it's infeasible in this situation, and frankly unobtainable for some things due to /the player's/ inherent 'superpowers' :/

I tried to Heck killed or arrested but that never seemed to work, even when I wiped the data (and he still liked me enough not to sell me out which amused me) so I felt terrible (well, justified) hearing about Wen

The bosses make a lot more sense when you consider that these guys' primary area of experience before this game (development started in 2005 apparently) was stuff like Fallout 2 and the cancelled Baldur's Gate 3. Compared to Frank Horrigan and enemies like Wanamingos, Deng and his counterparts in the other hubs are a walk through the park with your sweetie. It doesn't excuse them entirely, but a lot of what they were going for fell into place when I realised that.

I've wondered for a while if the Bauer/Bond/Bourne dialogue philosophy is reflected in the hubs as well. Everything about Rome is straight out of a Bond movie, and Taipei's confusing miasma of misdirection and twists definitely fits what I remember of the Bourne series. Moscow doesn't have much in common with 24 though...

Combat taunts are really just a relic that needs throwing out... They make videogames seem childish to me.

Also, how many times does Mike shout "Hey!" and completely ruining your stealth play-through in the other hubs... Twice in Taipei (One in the tube station one to start the boss fight with Deng) I don't think it happens much in Russia or Rome and where it does its better justified like when you are sneaked up on my G22 or confront Marburg about the bomb.